There are also a lot of investors out there buying good houses to rent them, mortgage to rent ratios are very good and rents only keep going up, making the market even more attractive.

Portland has been a quiet hidden real estate patch on the West Coast forever, the lowest per square foot value out of LA, SF & Seattle - due to Portland's tech/web/media/cloud/venture capital revolution we won't be quiet much longer. SF averages $300 to $400 per square foot - in the Pearl it's already there. As the lack of affordability spreads from inner city Portland outward, this will pull up the Burbs.

There were many who have been sitting on the side lines for up to 7 years now waiting to buy a home, building cash reserves and now they are pouncing.

There is also the exploding tech community bringing high paying jobs to the Portland. In other major markets per square foot is much higher – our $100 per square foot market is a steal for them. San Jose is $500 per square foot – for a 1400 sq foot ranch home – to them our old craftsman style homes is like bidding on a Benz for the price of a Ford Taurus. Of course they’ll out bid anyone to get one of these gems.

Vancouver is not being left out of this rush either – it’s tech community is growing rapidly, corporate offices from all over the country are moving there bringing many high paying staff with them – driving down carry inventory to under 5 months and pushing up values in desirable neighborhoods.

And with the continued printing of money by our central banks, simple currency devaluation pushes the value up.

This region will be well over 2007 prices in a very quick amount of time, if you own a home in a desirable inner city area you’d be crazy to sell. If you have to move, rent. In 10 years you’ll thank yourself over and over.

If the City of Portland really wanted to do something about these homes - it's called Eminent Domain or Condemning and can turn the property in as little as 90 days.

All the City has to do is file Eminent Domain or Condemn all these problem homes & sell at auction to the highest bidder.

City of Portland would get value by the auction price, rehab firms / individuals would get value, stores & service companies providing products & services for the rehab would get value, final buyers would get value and the neighborhood would get value by homes being occupied by people who will take care of the property.

Who would lose? Actually no one, your Government has already paid that loan in full with your bailout money.

Why won't the City of Portland use eminent domain or condemn - well that's a question for your city leaders.

Currently the banks can show these homes on their books at the loan values and not the actual resale value, this was one of the banking relaxations put in place when the financial crisis hit i/e Mark to Fantasy.

If they actually sell the house, then they have to show the loss on their books (currently they are not recording this asset as a loss) and hurt their income statements.

They are going to sit on these homes as long as possible so they don't have to record the loss. If they had to accurately report these assets - most of the banks would be insolvent and have to raise more cash to meet the Fed regulations for solvency.

By the time people in the Portland market figure out there is actually a shortage of homes for future demand, house prices will be back to their 2008 levels.

For good inner city housing, multiple offers coming in over the listing price is becoming the norm. As the software industry continues to grow, the downtown area could easily reach $300 to $400 per square foot for good properties.

In the metro development area of inner Vancouver, there are less than 600 city lots left that can be developed, all future development would have to be outside of the close in neighborhoods.

This is all about Agenda 21 and confining populations to government based transportation and central population zones.

They don't care about the congestion - the new bridge has the exact same amount of thru lanes as the old bridge - and it how many lanes the bridge would have when you hit the lane reduction in Delta Park.

It's all about getting Max into Vancouver (I-5 & 205), making it completely uneconomical to use private transportation thru tolls, gas or user taxes & forcing populations to live nearby & use public hard lines (Max).

Since considering that on average a grain farmer can expect (2011 prices) a return of around $400 per acre - but a hemp farmer can expect $500 per acre for stalks or $700+ per acre for seed (food production) - every farmer in Washington & Oregon should be pushing behind this and other similar legislation.

China uses a huge amount of hemp domestically & guess who gets that business today? Canada.

Internationally we are behind the curve on hemp - decades behind - it's time to get into the real world. Hemp has been used for centuries for fabric, clothes and food.

It's not POT people - you can't smoke it and get high. it's a renewable fiber & food resource with so many uses which would revitalize our agricultural communities. And you can grow it in arid areas of our states where normal grains won't perform well, adding to the economies of many of our high desert regions.

Real Estate is all about location - and right now the inner city region is on fire. More people moving here for a completely different mix of new high paying jobs (heavily weighted to tech/software) allowing buyers to drive up pricing for close in property. As more of these firms get bought by Private Equity or go public the amount of other firms being developed here or moving here will grow rapidly and so will the amount of money chasing close in real estate.

For those that aren't paying attention - get ready for inner metro Portland area properties to go to levels you would never believe they would or could. Look at San Jose, Palo Alto or other dense software job real estate markets and you'll get a taste of what's coming - $300 dollars a square foot will be cheap, more like $400.

Ultimately, this ripple will turn into a wave and drive up many outlying neighborhoods in value (Lake O, Beaverton, East Clark County, Downtown Vancouver, etc).

Portland has been the cheapest market in the West Coast forever, that time is coming to an end.

This is nothing more than the PPT (Plunge Protection Team) of the Federal Government doing everything they can to make the Sheep (retail investors) think everything is all right.

Everything is not all right. Greece will exit the Euro, causing a massive sovereign debt default, Spain will be next and the dominos will fall from there. Contagion is unavoidable at this point and it will reach our shores by the end of this year.

Don't buy into the hype, you will get led to the slaughter like any good Sheepie.

You do realize that your government is paying millions of dollars per solar industry job in means of subsidies?

Great return on our investment, we pay a million dollars to a private company to pay someone $50k a year. might as well just give the $50k to the potential employee directly and save ourselves $950,000 per employee.

yes, the math works out this way. So far the US Gov & States have given SolarWorld near $1.0 Billion in subsidies for 1,000 jobs. That's $1.0 Million per laborer that averages around $50k per year.

Comcast is just another greedy POS company. Just like Northwest Natural. It doesn't cost Comcast a cent for data streaming - they've paid for that hardline trunk years ago - it's all profit at this point. What the world needs is Peer to Peer internet (like a ham radio network).

For those that don't know, natural gas prices are at historical lows, yet NW Natural wants a 6% rate increase. hmm... how does that work again? your input costs are at historical lows and you want to charge 6% more than last year?

"Greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right." Gordon Gekko

First China will hit the US with counter prevailing tariffs on our main exports of food & tech. forget about sending chicken or pork meat to China for awhile.

Second they will transship all these solar products to Indonesia or India or some other tariff free country for cleansing of the country of origin problem, then export to US as product of Mexico or Indonesia, etc. Happens all the time. As well they'll build plants in India, Malaysia etc and just continue the expansion of the industry so that SolarWorld will not only have to deal with all the transshipped products but now also have more competition from these newly expanded plants.

SolarWorld - wake up and smell the bankruptcy. You're toast and you should be smart enough to know it.

And of course finally - SolarWorld is not a US company - it's a German company, so all those billions of dollars of US subsidies that our Government gave to SolarWorld actually never went to an American company, they were shuttled from our checkbook, to our Government to SolarWorld and then over to Germany. Vundabar.

I'm not a fan of right wing media, but if you don't believe in the social engineering that's happening around you - this is like saying you don't believe in global warming. Too much data to dispute otherwise.

I suggest you actually read the Agenda, you'll see progressive public policy in a different light.

The public is speaking with their ballots - Brady is an evangelical socialist wanting to shove Agenda 21 down the throats of Portland residents. While most people don't know what the UN's Agenda 21 is - they can smell the stink of socialist policies a mile away - and this is why she will get buried in the election.

While Oregon is one of the least business friendly states in the country and for many firms there is ample reason to uproot from Oregon to other States, this is not one of those cases.

For an outdoor apparel firm to leave the mecca of outdoor gear; vast depth of talent for this industry & a supply chain that is well established from Asia to Portland - this move makes no sense.

Who's going to take a winter clothing company seriously when the design team & operations are based in Los Angeles? A Parka/Sundress combination perhaps? They will quickly lose the pulse of the culture they are supposed to be providing products for. not a lot of skiing opportunities in LA.

If they wanted to do surf wear, they might as well have sold the firm and used the funds to build the new company.

Come on, is this really a surprise to anyone? Oregon is one of the least friendly business States in the nation.

AT&T did not say they were downsizing, no to the contrary, just realigning their current operations with more business friendly locations.

It's time Oregon got over itself and realized global business has options, they don't have to deal with Oregon's overtaxation & death spiral of deficit spending. Let alone the smug manner in which Oregon politicians keep layering more capital expense projects on business.

Max to Vancouver anyone? this is worse than Alaska's bridge to nowhere. how many people in Vancouver work along a Portland Max line? 100? 1000? let's call it a thousand. So we spend $3.3 Billion just to put the bridge and Max in, a few billion a year for upkeep for 1,000 people. Wow, what a deal!